Gardening « Bruce Littlefield's Life 101

Holidays – Groundhog!

Happy (?) Groundhog’s Day, the day Punxsutawney Phil climbs out of his burrow in Pennsylvania at 7:20 a.m. in front of a crowd of 40,000 visitors to predict whether winter will “end” early. Today, he scurried back inside, indicating we’ve got another 6 weeks. But, um, he’s accurate only 39% of the time, which [...]

Life 101 – Simple happiness

As my PaPa used to say, “I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger with hives.” It’s “back to school” season and if you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of time. So, simple is beautiful. Here are a few Life 101 ideas to inspire a happy day: A love noted dropped in a [...]

Life 101 – Every Home Should Have…

Hope you’re going to have some fun in your yard this weekend. During the summer, one of my favorite things is to roll my garden cart out to the flower beds and whip up some arrangements. I think every home should have a garden cart. I got mine at a garage sale and besides [...]

Garage Sales – New economy

My garden cart is a garage sale find. I adore it and think it has so much more character than something new out of the box. I think with the economic times we find ourselves in ($5 gallon gas!) and all the talk about being “green,” this summer will see more garage sales than [...]

Gardening – Koi Pond duty

The pond is open. The ick is over.

I’m smiling not because I like it, but because it’s over. Taking the netting off the koi pond each year is always filled with heartache and slime. Heartache because we sometimes have lost one or two, and slime because the rest of those things can make [...]

Life 101 – Spring has sprung

For several weeks, I thought someone had stolen my trashcan. It had lived for years at the top of my farm’s driveway and then suddenly it was gone. SO, here’s today’s Catskill scene after two days finally above 60 degrees. Forget tulips, my yard is bloomin’ trashcan! But CAN my sweet flowers be far [...]

Life 101 – Bruce’s tips for beating the winter blues

Every winter as the snow piles up, we all start getting what I call “wacky shacky” (bug-eyed hysteria from being holed up in the house.) I’m sitting here right now day-dreaming about working in my garden! So, I thought I’d share a few of my Life 101 ideas to beat back the doldrums of [...]

Life 101 – Dandelion in time lapse

If you want to be dazzled and amazed at the beauty of life, watch this time lapse video of a dandelion flower to seed head. It was shot every 5 to 45 minutes over a month on a Nikon D200 with 55mm lens under a growlight. See if you can spot the aphids [...]

Gardening – Bulb planting

Plant now. Payoff later.

One of the things that gets me through the long, cold winter is knowing I have bulbs in the ground, working up to their magical pop in the early days of spring. If you want to have a little miracle of life in your yard come March, now is the [...]

Giveaways – My tomato crime spree!

Wagon full of my homegrown tomatoes.

Just got back from the post office, where I was overnighting another box of veggies to my octogenarian grandparents in South Carolina. When the postal clerk asked me: “Does your package contain anything liquid, perishable, fragile or potentially hazardous?” I looked her in the eye and [...]

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